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New Order Producer: "Great Stories" Are Part Of The Future

Despite all the strides we've made in the gaming industry, we've still got a ways to go in the narrative department. Wolfenstein: The New Order producer Jerk Gustafsson spoke about the subject over at the PlayStation Blog.

The interesting part is that his team's latest game actually puts a premium on the story, which is increasingly rare for shooters (although it looks like Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare could have an intriguing plot). As for the story aspect, Gustafsson said:

"This is where we can break ground, where gaming still has a long way to go--the narrative--this is where I believe we shine, where I believe we will continue to shine. Great stories combined with exciting and truly fun combat experiences. This is what I believe is the future of gaming."

It's even more interesting to hear him say he believes that's the "future of gaming." For the most part, I'm not really seeing that just yet, because massive open-world adventures don't scream "great story" to me. It hasn't in the past, anyway, but I suppose things could change for the better.

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Of course they're part of the future. They've been part of the past as well.Metal Gear, Bishock, and The Last of Us etc are examples of games with strong stories and fun game play.Last edited by Temjin001 on 5/21/2014 10:12:41 PM

This game btw looks pretty good. I think I'll check it out. BUt right now I'm swamped with games. Flipping ACIV is huUUUGgge. I also have TR:DE to play. I also bought Transistor last night and started it... it's pretty slick too.

lol, which rock has he been under? Things do need to get a lot better though, we still have way too many generic plots made for 12 year old comprehension. It drives me crazy.

I wish new control schemes were the future too, it's time to change things up for the new generation. There still so much room to cover but everyone would rather play it safe with almost the exact same boring controls across all games.

Great, now force third party devs to do it. Seriously why isn't there a racer that uses the thumb stick as a realistic wheel turn? Where is the FPS that takes into account the fact that people cant run sideways and backward perfectly? When will we stop mashing Square to swing? (Revengeance was on the right track)

GG tried something like that with KZ2. The weighty controls. Some people liked it but apparently more people didn't. GG caved and ditched the look and feel of KZ2 and went for lots of lights and tons of colors and twitch-happy controls. Unfortunately at the AAA level majority rules.

I remember really enjoying games like Gunvalkyrie, PN03, Virtual-On because they didn't rely on control norms to define the game play. It was fun, even functionally, to play. Though, because it was unconventional some people hated it. Scores went polarized. Those days seem long gone at the high end level. Most games need to be as idiot-proof as possible for the masses. Where everything control related happens as intuitively as it can.Last edited by Temjin001 on 5/22/2014 12:25:18 PM

This game looks pretty good. It has a lot of little things on top of an actual half decent story going for it. If we're lucky this will be part of an increasing trend of story telling effort in games. Obviously New Order didn't start it, but it could be part of it.

Xenogears had one of the most in depth storylines I've ever seen. Especially for games. It suffered from the dreaded bad-dialogue monster, but I haven't really seen things go uphill since that game in terms of story.

As a side... if you like playing old PS1 games like on an emulator or for PSP... I 100% recommend Xenogears. It was amazing at the time. Just drop dead awesome story. 3D worlds, too, with a rotating camera. Not even the Final Fantasies did that!